Abstract

When this topic was mooted by the journal editors, it was seen as having two parts: 1. The professional content knowledge of the English/literacy teacher, and 2. The implications of this “knowledge construction” for classrooms that in many places are becoming increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse. We saw ourselves as wanting to provide an opportunity to revisit themes raised in two early issues of English Teaching: Practice and Critique. In the inaugural issue of the journal (1:1; November 2002), members of the newly established Editorial Board and others shared a personalised account of the “state of English (Language Arts)” in their respective constituencies. The overriding question was: “What is it like to be an English teacher right now in this time and place?”